In case you haven’t heard the word around school, our beloved bathroom mirrors have been missing since the Monday that we came back from Fall Break. With no word on why they’re gone or where they’ve went, students have been left pretty confused and some even angry. Being rather curious myself, I asked Mrs. Hurley, the Assistant Principal of Operations and Instruction, what had happened to them and got some very useful information.

At the end of last quarter, the administration met to see what they could do in order to improve Sahuaro and the wellness of the students. Mrs. Hurley said that one of the biggest problems was the loitering and large amounts of vandalism in our school bathrooms. So, in order to help speed up the lines for the stalls and make the school look nicer, the admin decided that it would be in the school’s best interest to take down the mirrors all together and put them in storage so that students would “do their personal business and get back to class.”

When I asked a few female students how they felt about this, Elizabeth Grijalva, a junior, commented, “It’s a little extreme to remove mirrors as a punishment for tardiness. Teachers and administration should regulate and punish tardiness by affecting grades, not the removal of material objects such as mirrors.”

Hannah Record, also a junior, said, “I don’t think that it’s a good idea to take down the mirrors in the women’s bathroom because if someone were to get something in their eye, they wouldn’t be able to look and get it out and sometimes we have dress malfunctions and we need to be able to see if something is going wrong and if we’re about to embarrass ourselves.”

Mrs. Stedman, SHS math teacher agrees with the removal.  “I would like to sympathize with the students, but this is only a problem in First World Countries. The backlash from the mirrors being removed is unacceptable. Graffiti on the bathroom walls in Sharpie is not going to get the mirrors replaced anytime soon. Your phones have all the mirrors you need.”

Surprisingly, when I asked if Sahuaro was the only school to do this, I was told that we were not the first to take action. While I wasn’t given any names, apparently many schools have taken down their mirrors as well.

While having no mirrors may seem like a good idea to some people, I know that many students are wondering if we will ever be able to get them back. Lucky for us, I was told that the admin will be meeting again at the end of the semester and the mirrors will be replaced if the issues have improved.